Saying "our
vulnerabilities are huge," Senator Bill First,
Republican of Tennessee, told the WEF that it is
imperative that the nation face the new realities
of bioterrorism.
First,
a physician by training, said the public health infrastructure
in the US is inadequate to handle the threat posed
by terrorists armed with biological weapons. What's
more, First pointed out, there is much we don't know
about anthrax. How deadly is anthrax? Can there be
cross-contamination? As soon as the first anthrax-related
death was reported last fall, "all our assumptions
went out the window," First remarked.
First comments came as Washington is considering
drastically expanding its efforts to thwart bioterrorism.
The New York Times reported in yesterday's edition
that the Bush administration has decided to seek
$11 billion over two years to protect the nation
against biological terrorism, a far larger amount
than even defense experts had predicted. For
fiscal year 2003, which begins in October, the
White House will request $5.9 billion to combat
the threat--four times what the administration
spent prior to the September 11 attacks. According
to the Times, the Bush plan foresees pumping
$1.6 billion into state and local health agencies
that have suffered from years of federal neglect
and low budgets.
Anthrax-tainted
letters killed five people in the US last fall
and infected 18 more. The offices
of Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy (Vermont)
and Tom Daschle (South Dakota) were targeted
with letters containing anthrax. Jerome Hauer,
founder and managing director of the Crisis and
Consequence Management Group at Kroll USA, admitted
that he never thought a bioterrorism attack would
occur so soon in the US. But the Daschle and
Leahy letters changed all that. "Bioterrorism
will be an increasing threat," he added.
Margaret
A. Hamburg, vice president for biological programs
at the
Washington-based Nuclear Threat
Initiative, pointed out that, "For many
diseases, we have no medical interventions, for
others we have, but there is a limited window
of opportunity for treatment." She added
that there are other challenges for prevention
as well. Unlike other weapons, she explained,
biological agents appear in nature and then are
worked on in research labs where they can be
concealed easily. She agreed with Senator First
that the public health infrastructure needs to
be rebuilt if the US is to deal with risks posed
by bioterrorism. Expanding on the medical challenges
involved in combatting bioterrorism, Ken Alibek,
president of Hadron Advanced Biosystems, said
that we need first to understand the general
regularities of infectious diseases, including
what can be done in the late stages of infection.
There is a great need for a science of infectious
diseases caused by biological weapons, Alibek
remarked. Responding to the suggestion that a
system be created to regulate the use of pathogens,
Alibek said he believes it would not work because
there are just too many pathogens in labs, and
only a very small amount is required to manufacture
tons of biological weapons. Speaking as a previous
resident of the former Soviet Union, he cautioned "that
here in the US, we still believe we can apply
American norms to all the countries in the world.
But it is not possible."
Thomas
H. Murray, president of the Hastings Center,
said that
increased pressure to use human
subjects for scientific research should be expected.
If there is another bioterrorism attack, he said,
difficult decisions would have to be made quickly
about who would be protected first. "I advise
that we don't wait," he concluded, "we
should decide on what to do." Murray suggested
that public health workers be protected first.
Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow at the Lexington
Institute in Arlington, Va.
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